A GOOD EXAMPLE.-In a very small and quiet village in the B- Circuit there lives a labouring man who is a member of the Methodist Society, and is blessed with a pious and industrious wife, who makes his home as happy as only such wives can. The blessing of godliness is enjoyed so thoroughly in that little cottage, that, go when you will, you are sure to find a quiet, restful air of contentment reigning within, and a smile of satisfaction beaming in the countenance of its happy inmates, which makes you feel as if they lived in perpetual sunshine. In that respect, if in no other, "Godliness with contentment is great gain." May such happy homes amongst the labouring classes be greatly multiplied! Two years ago, at the Missionary Meeting in their little chapel, this pious couple were deeply touched by the needs of the perishing heathen, and resolved, if

HOW

possible, to do something more for them than they had hitherto done. But how was it to be done? There was one little indulgence which could be dispensed with. Henceforth the fragrant (?) weed was not admitted, and the money which had gone to purchase it, put into a Missionary-box. The writer has had the pleasure of opening the box twice, and obtained in so short a time for the Mission cause, the sum of £2 3s. 10d.,chiefly the savings of abstinence from tobacco. Need we say the good man looks no worse, and feels happier in the thought that he has been able to do so much for that Saviour Whom he loves? Perhaps this may meet the eye of some who are anxious to do more for Christ, and for perishing humanity, but have not yet thought of a little selfdenial. Such, on reading this, may be inclined to "Go and do likewise." F. H.

easy it is to get "out of the way!" In an open country where there are not many people abroad, and where there are a great many turns this way and that, nothing is easier than to take the wrong way, and to find yourself, by the time you ought to be at your destination, several miles off in a contrary direction. So it was with the writer the other Sunday, when going to preach at a village for the first time. I missed my way. I see it now, and know where I failed to get into the direct road. I should have gone through a gateway, but as the road was simply a cart-track, I thought that the road round the corner to the right, a good wide one, must be the proper way; and on this I travelled for some time, until at length I found myself within a short distance of where I started from at first! I got wrong at the gateway. As I went along afterwards, I could not help seeing a lesson in the incident both for myself and the congregation. "Ah!" said I, "this is exactly where so many men get wrong and miss the road to heaven. They

do not go in at the gate of which Jesus Christ spoke when He said, 'Strive to enter in at the strait gate.'" This is God's gate, through which we must pass in order to get into God's way to heaven. Men think they can find out an easier and more pleasant road. Thus the Romanist seeks a way through the mediation of the Virgin Mary; the idolator, by the sacrifice of his child; the Pharisee, by his good works; and many formal professors of religion, by mere church-going and sacramental services. But these are all "out of the way." They must come through the "strait gate;" they must "repent, and believe the Gospel ;" they "must be born again," or they "cannot see the kingdom of God." The Lord Jesus Christ shuts every other door of admission into the kingdom of heaven, while He says of Himself, "I am the Way; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." Let every one look at his own course and ask himself, "Am I really in the way to heaven ?" J. T.

ONE

NE of the earliest English essayists, when speaking of the Saviour's Jewish foes, shrewdly said, "With all their malice and inveteracy to our Saviour, and His apostles after Him, had they but taken the fancy to act such puppet-shows in His contempt as at this hour the Papists are acting in His honour, I am apt to think they might possibly have done our religion more harm than by all their other ways of severity." These Popish "puppet-shows" are still in fashion, and under promise of a new run in England, they still serve among the most effective mischiefs in the way of pure Christianity. The world will never cease to be fond of "puppet-shows," especially when they are under church patronage; for unhallowed human nature is always glad to be shown how it can be religious in its own gay and easy fashion. Wherever the pure Gospel of Christ makes its appeal to men, whether in the far West or in the ancient East, there Popery throws perplexities in its way by seting up its false claims, and opening its show of Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars,

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White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery." By its presence and action in China it has created difficulties for the Imperial court in its relation to European Powers. Even the supreme authorities of the "Celestial Empire" find it hard to maintain social order and commercial freedom against the wily dealings of French priests. Like many others in "high places" both in East and West, the Chinese rulers have been so deceived by Popish pretensions that they have too readily identified the machinery of the Papistical system with "pure and undefiled religion." Hence they complain that the working of their treaties with foreign nations, and their relations to the powers with whom they have treated, are rendered unsatisfactory by the hostile position of Christian missionaries against the laws and authorities of the Empire. These "Christian missionaries" prove to be four or five hundred of the Pope's agents, three-fourths of whom are French, and all of whom claim more than the privileges of Chinese citizenship; freedom, in fact, from obligation to Chinese law. This has become clear during the negotiation between the Imperial authorities of China and our English officials. The demands of the Chinese amount to the suppression of monkery, convent life, and schools

shut against parental and government visitation. Indeed the antipathy of the ruling class in China to Christian missionaries is neither more nor less than a dread of Popish ascendancy, and apprehension that French Papists may beget a disaffected population under the guise of religion, and then call in French power to shield them against the interference of Chinese law. The Chinese are wise enough to see that those who act on sworn allegiance to a foreign power which is held by its votaries to have infallible and supreme rights, both temporal and spiritual, over the highest authority of the land they live in, have no claim to civil equality with the loyal subjects of that land; and that a system founded on the principle of enforced celibacy is so contrary to nature, and essentially so hostile to the social health and order of a State, that it may properly be brought under the action of prohibitory law. English people in general may have ceased to be influenced by such wisdom; but what now passes in China indicates, at all events, the duty of Protestant English Christians. They should express, by all means in their power, their agreement with Lord Granville on the part of England, that " we do not claim to afford any species of protection to Chinese Christians which may be construed as withdrawing them from their native allegiance." At the same time it becomes us to prove to China our non-identity with that "puppet-show" style of mission-work which has so mischievously crossed the course of evangelical truth, by quietly exemplifying the spirit of the Gospel, by "speaking the truth in love;" so that "with true knowledge and understanding of the Word, both by preaching and living, we may set it forth, and show it accordingly." We may safely leave it to Chinese authorities to deal with intriguing priests. It is for us rather, like apostolic Christians amidst scenes of idolatry, to keep ourselves to our proper calling as preachers of saving truth; fully confident that the genuine faith of Christ will accomplish all that our warmest zeal desires. In this the example of the great Protestant, Luther, is deeply instructive: "I condemn images," says he, "but would deal with them so that the people may no longer have the faith in them which they have heretofore had. To effect this is the work of the Word, not of violence."

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shadows which covered the history of the solitary pillar of "moorstone," was not quite so clear. Amidst all the difficulties of the question, however, there remained the fact of the local feeling. Probably it was Nature's inward instinctive acknowledgment of our spiritual relationship to the unseen. In that instinct of man's spiritual nature may be found the secret of our liability to what some people call superstitious feeling. Without that instinct, false ghostly terror would not be possible. That instinct underlies all the foolish alarms which are laughed at in the over-credulous victims of deception. It was at the bottom of a fright which once made an old gentleman of my acquaintance look ridiculous. I met him one night just as he had got out of the saddle, after a ride home from the Land's End. In a tone, halfcrying, half-laughing, he said :

"I have met with such a thing to-night as never happened to me before in my life!"

"Indeed! What is the matter?" "Matter! I hardly know whether to laugh or to cry; I feel myself still in a kind of flutter; you will think me a fool."

"What is it?"

"Well, I was coming along at a gentle trot over the green, enjoying my thoughts about Chapel Carnbræ, how in old time, as they say, during the night-prayers in the little chapel that was once on the top of the hill, the lights might be seen from the road, and how the chant of the psalm might have cheered the traveller on his way. That time is past, said I to myself, and many a generation that came after is gone too. Then I thought of those whose dust was resting in the old Quakers' burying-ground, which was now in sight. But all at once there was a thrill, my blood, as we say, crept in my veins, for there, right before me, was a very tall figure in a brilliant white robe. I stopped and gazed, held my breath, and, I declare to you, I felt as if my hair were lifting the hat from my head! I was cold and hot by turns; still the horse, without my bidding, moved on, and the figure seemed to lose its brightness, and, as I thought, was vanishing, when, at a few more paces in advance, I saw-nothing but the old 'moorstone' pillar, stript of its robe of moonlight! From the point at which it first caught my eye the moonbeams were full upon it, giving it a white-robed appearance against the dark side of the grave-yard walls. The white apparition vanished, of course, as I changed my point of view. Strange, that I did not think till then of its being a moonlight-night.

I must have been moon-stricken, and I seem to have been mooning it ever since."

The dear old man's adventure afforded another lesson on optics, but it gave an insight into man's secret acknowledgment of his family relation to unseen spiritual kith and kin. I have passed by the scene of the old man's fright at all hours both by night and by day, but never has anything come to me there but quiet thought and visions of peace. Often have I brought my horse up close under the old grave-yard wall, that I might stand in my stirrups and look over upon the sunken grassy mounds under which the mortal relics of George Fox's Land's End converts await the last fulfilment of his first words to them, "The mighty day of the Lord is coming!" There was no stone, no memorial letter, to tell which was the grave of the first "Friend" of the west, or which was the resting place of the "last man" of the little Sennen flock. A plaintive feeling always came over me on turning away from the lonely spot. It seemed as if all the fruit of Fox's labours had gone beneath the turf. Not that it was really so. George Fox had been a pioneer, a breaker up of fallow ground, a preparer of the way, a voice in the desert, startling, stirring, and giving out the rudiments of promise, the fulfilment of which was to unfold at the sound of later voices. Fox scattered mixed seed. The grain of least value for the higher purposes of human life had, here and there, a speedy but transient development. The purer grain was longer in the ground, and might have been pronounced dead; but the germ sprang at last, and bore fruit of other form and quality than the sower had looked for, and in larger measures, too, thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold. The ministry of Fox prepared the way for the ministry of Wesley. This becomes strikingly apparent to those who closely follow the missionary movements, first of the Quaker, then of the Methodist. The interesting relation between the work of the one and that of the other may be traced throughout England almost at every point where the steps of the one so remarkably came upon the footprints of the other. The Land's End district affords a fair illustration. It may be

received as an exemplar case. The distinct but kindred labours of the two men, as seen in their results on that one spot, are suggestive of what may be found true respecting the successive missions of the Quaker and the Methodist in all other fields of observation. There are remarkable points of resemblance between the "Journals" of the two men.